A Baracuda and Boa

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by Laura Parker Roerden

I once saw a torpedo of a barracuda
rake through a school of fairy basslets,
gorging on the smaller fish as if they
were kernels of popcorn at a movie.

The barracuda was all torque and fang;
the fairy basslets a delicate purple
and orange, like a fragile glass vase
created by a master artisan.

The fairy basslets shattered and crowned,
as if a slow motion video of a bullet tearing flesh.
The barracuda’s silvery length glistened in the light,
like a knife. I felt a deep sense of peace.

I once saw a boa constrictor dead on the street,
two perfectly paced tractor tires impressed on its body
its guts squeezed onto the pavement.
The snake’s head was somewhere far

ahead of its now severed tail. It stretched from
jungle across man’s path to hell and beyond.
The snake’s skin was stuck to asphalt, the bones
now on the outside. I jumped out of my own skin.

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Published by Laura Parker Roerden

Laura Parker Roerden shares a love of what nature can teach us. Writer, public speaker and supportor of youth to boldly know and save the wilds. She is the founding director of Ocean Matters and a fourth generation farmer and thinks today’s young people are reason to be hopeful about the many environmental problems facing us. She lives on a family farm in Massachusetts with her husband, three boys, and an assortment of fruit trees and farm animals.

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